Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
PRESENTATION I'm Zac Katz I'm the Chief of Staff at the
Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Genachowski he would have loved to be here
today but he had a prior commitment elsewhere. Before I start I want to thank the FCCs data
team. Greg Allen our Chief Data Officer is in the back row. Mike Burn couldn't be here
today but our Geographic Information Officer who's also been a key part of our efforts
at the FCC to unlock data. Those two positions are positions that the
Chairman created back in 2009 the first time the FCC had ever had those roles as part of
our commitment to open data and open government. So aside from our obsession with data some
of you may be wondering what's the FCC doing at Education Datapalooza. Let me try to answer
that. We over the last few years have really refocused the FCC on broadband wired and wireless.
Our mission is to maximize the benefits of broadband to improve the lives of all Americans.
That means freeing up wireless spectrum for mobile broadband, that means driving improvements
in broadband deployment and broadband adoption, and it also means helping harness the power
of broadband to address key national challenges of which education is one. Ensuring that students
and schools have the connectivity they need for digital learning is a key focus of the
agency. Many of you here today are developing innovative
tools for digital learning. Most if not all I would guess depend on broadband, wire and
wireless, to work. And so Chairman Genachowski, Secretary Duncan, along with the staffs of
those agencies have been collaborating for the last few years on a series of digital
learning initiatives with the overall goal of making sure that all K-12 students have
both the digital tools and the broadband access they need to flourish.
That's one of the reasons why modernizing the E-Rate program is one of our top priorities.
For those of you who don't know the E-Rate program is a $2.3 billion dollar a year program
that provides funding for schools and libraries throughout the country for broadband, phone
connectivity and internal technologies. For the last 15 years since this program started
the FCC which administers it has been the largest single funder of information and communications
technology and services in schools throughout the country.
The program I think has been a success but there's certainly room for improvement. When
Congress created it in 1996 only 14% of America schools were connected to the internet. That
number is now 97% and the vast majority of classrooms themselves are now connected. In
20120 we took a look at the program, which hadn't changed in any significant way for
more than a decade, decided it was time to look at some significant modernizations and
reforms. We eliminated red tape that was restricting
schools from buying the cheapest highest capacity broadband they could find in their communities.
We also removed restrictions that prevented schools from making their computer labs available
for the community to use. So now schools using what's called School Spots can open up their
facilities after hours or on the weekends for the community to use E-Rate funded equipment
for the first time. We also recognized that in an increasing mobile
world E-Rate shouldn't just fund connectivity on campus but there might be benefits to mobile
connectivity, including for students at home and other off campus sites. So for the first
time ever we launched a pilot program called Learning on the Go, which is enabling 20 schools,
school districts and libraries around the country to trial the use of E-Rate support
for mobile connectivity for students as well as educators.
Finally we allowed the program for the first time to grow with inflation it had been capped
since its inception at 1996 levels. And we knew the demand for connectivity was far outstripping
the resources of the program, so we're now seeing modest increases in the size of the
program each year. We know that smart policies including our
E-Rate fundamentally depend on good data, data for the public sector to make decisions
and data for the private sector to come up with innovative solutions to the problems
that we face. So we've taken a series of actions at the FCC to free up data. I'll just tick
off a few and then talk about the announcement we're making today about data release.
Over the last few years we've launched a web portal for developers called www.FCC.gov/developers
connects the public with tools they need to access government data, including beyond the
FCC. Working closely with the Department of Commerce we developed and released the nation's
first National Broadband Map which is a detailed map with data on where broadband is available
at what speeds throughout the country. We provided analytical tools, open APIs that
enable third parties to analyze and build new maps off the National Broadband Map. The
Department of Education Jim Shelton, Karen Cator and their team did great stuff with
this including providing a map of broadband develop ability at US schools so you can see
for schools throughout the country what broadband they have able from which providers.
We've also used this map for policymaking. Two weeks ago we launched the country's first
mobility phone. This was a reverse action program that enabled wireless companies to
bid for up to $300 million dollars in support to extend 3G and 4G coverage to rural areas
that weren't going to get covered without some public help.
Also coming out of our national broadband plan we developed a recommendation that all
agencies have web portal that help facilitate public access to data. We've seen the Blue
Button initiative enabling patient access to medical data, the Green Button initiative
with customer access to energy usage. And today I'm announcing that by the end of
this week the FCC is going to release for the first time a machine readable dataset
of all E-Rate funding requests and purchases for the most recent complete funding cycle.
So this is a substantial amount of data about the E-Rate program. It includes things like
what broadband and other communication services and equipment schools throughout the country
are requesting. We've got 100,000 unique service requests,
1.4 million records describing the schools and libraries. We'll have information on the
category of services that schools actually purchased, how much they paid, how much E-Rate
disbursed. And we'll also have for the first time data on students served per funding requests
and the percentage discount match rate that is the percentage that schools, school districts
had to use to match the E-Rate contribution. We want to see what others can do with this
data. We want to also understand what additional questions we can help answer by gathering
and publishing more data. So questions might include what broadband services technologies
are being used by schools today? What's the impact of connectivity on student performance?
From the FCC's perspective one of the most important questions how can we make the E-Rate
program, this $2.3 billion dollars over $20 billion dollars over the next decade, how
can we make that spend more efficient and how can we make it more affective. And I think
we'll be looking for all the ideas that get generated by this data and by other in the
private sector and the public sector to help us on that.
The data that we're going to be releasing this week is just the first step. It includes
data only for funding Year 2010. We're going to continue working with USAC, that's the
entity some of you may know that administers E-Rate on a day-to-day basis, to provide streamlined
access to full data sets, to provide more years of data.
As we do this we really want to work with all of you, those in this room and those in
the education innovation space who aren't in this room, to collaborate on ways to provide
easier access to E-Rate data to better understand E-Rate's impact at the macro level.
More broadly we'd love input on designing reforms to E-Rate including ways to improve
the efficiency of the data that gets collected from schools, school districts and libraries,
and the fidelity of the data we collect. So to that end and in closing I'd strongly
encourage all of you here to the extent that you have any questions about E-Rate, about
the data that we're going to make available, or any ideas for things that we could be doing
differently or better to reach out to us. Greg Allan who I mentioned is in the back
row should be here I think for the rest of the session. He'd loved to hear your ideas
I'd love to hear your ideas. We're very eager for collaboration in this area.
Thank you much.
ZAC KATZ, CHIEF OF STAFF, FCC
© 2012 OfficeOfEdTech Page 2